Her voice wasn’t panicked but rather controlled. Still the tremble in her breath betrayed her. Halvard had always admired strength, but Elsie’s pierced him differently. It made him want to stand with his shield raised and his blade drawn until the world dared come for her.
For her, he would fight them all to his last breath. For her, he would not hold back. He wanted to protect the fragile peace that had formed between them.
If only peace were ever allowed to last.
“We go tae the great hall first,” Halvard said. “I want tae hear the full report.”
Elsie didn’t argue. She simply nodded, though her jaw tightened as if in irritation. They continued walking, Sten falling into step behind them like a silent shadow. But two turns later, just before the great hall doors, Elsie stopped again. She faced Halvard fully now, her eyes blazing with the kind of fury born from fear.
“I was supposed to be on my way back by now,” she said, her voice a low whisper as she shot a glance over her shoulder, as if fearing someone would hear—and it was more likely than Halvard would have liked, considering that they were standing in the middle of the hallway. “This was supposed to be temporary, until Harcourt and the rest of the envoys left. Well, they’re gone now and I’m still still here! I’m still stuck here and there doesn’t seem to be a way back for me. No way back home, no way back to my sister.”
Her voice cracked on that last word, her emotions getting the better of her. It was not the first time Elsie had expressed her disappointment about not being with her sister, but this time, there was something else behind her gaze, something fiercer, something that gave Halvard pause.
She had tried to hide it, but she couldn’t help herself.
He tried to reach for her hand, but she pulled back before he could.
“Elsie,” he began carefully, “there is strategy tae consider. Timin’. It’s nae only the weather that is stoppin’ us now. With the English at the borders, securing passage willnae be easy, even if they claim tae have nay plans tae attack.”
Despite what Harcourt and his people might claim, Halvard knew he was behind it all, and he wouldn’t risk crossing the sea with him there, nor would he risk leaving his clan in the middle of what could very well turn out to be war.
Besides, there was another thing—something he didn’t want to discuss in front of Sten.
Something he didn’t even want to admit to himself.
How is it so easy fer her tae go?
Each time she brought up the conversation, a knot rose in Halvard’s throat, one that threatened to choke him with every labored, painful breath he took. Elsie wanted to see her sister more than anything, and it was true that this had been their agreement all along—she would pretend to be his wife, and he would take her back to England at the end of it all.
Well, the end of it all had already come.
“I’ll be in the great hall,” Sten said with a polite cough, before his footsteps disappeared. Suddenly, he and Elsie were alone, and the truth threatened to slip past Halvard’s lips, to fall to her feet, tender and bleeding.
For a moment, they only stared at each other in silence, Halvard’s chest heaving as if he had run for miles. He wondered if there was something vulnerable in his expression; he wondered if he was showing more than he meant to, and from the way Elsie was looking at him, it was more likely than he wanted to think.
“I thought?—”
He cut himself short. An exhale tore through him, sharp and cutting.
“What did you think?” Elsie asked, flat and expressionless, as if wary to lean either way—towards sympathy or towards anger.
Halvard shook his head with a sigh. “It daesnae matter.”
But Elsie wasn’t so quick to drop the subject. “Halvard, what did you think?”
He lifted his gaze, his eyes meeting hers. Perhaps it was time for the truth.
“I thought, after everythin’, ye might want tae stay.”
It was Elsie’s turn to let out a breath, sudden and trembling, weighed by an emotion he could not yet identify. He didn’t want to be so optimistic as to consider it anything akin to longing.
“It… it is not my desire to leave you,” she said in the end, after a long pause that tore Halvard’s breath from his lungs. “But my sister… Selene is very important to me, Halvard. You must understand that. And I’m very important to her. She must be worried sick now that I’m away from her, in a strange land, surrounded by strangers. You won’t even allow me to send a letter.”
“Because it can very easily be intercepted,” Halvard interrupted.
“Yes,” said Elsie. “But my sister might already think me dead. Did you ever consider that? Did you ever think that maybe there is someone out there who cares for me and can’t bear the absence? The silence?”
Halvard had never seen Elsie so fierce before. Her eyes shone with the kind of challenge he had only seen before in battle—as if she was daring him to minimize her sister’s importance.
